And if Clayton Kershaw needed any reinforcement, which he didn’t, it was all around him at Dodger Stadium.

Disabled teammate Josh Beckett had changed his schedule for Game 6 of the 2003 World Series, when he pitched for Florida. He was supposed to work Game 7 in Yankee Stadium. Instead he pitched Game 6. He threw the first and final pitches of that game, without a Yankee crossing home plate, and he celebrated that night, just as he cavorted late Monday night at Dodger Stadium.

Afterward Sandy Koufax stopped by the clubhouse, champagne glass in hand. Catcher A.J. Ellis asked him about the efficacy of Kershaw throwing Game 4 of this Division Series on three days’ rest instead of four.

“One year I went five times on two days’ rest,” Koufax told him.

There was General Manager Ned Colletti, who was working in the Cubs’ front office in 1984. The Cubs have pretty much been a trail of tears for nearly a century, but this was particularly cruel: They left Chicago with a 2-0 lead on San Diego in the NL Championship Series, which was best-of-5 at the time, and then lost Games 3 and 4 in San Diego.

“We saved Rick Sutcliffe, who was 16-1, for Game 5,” Colletti said, a towel around his neck and a soaked T-shirt over his dress shirt. “He had won the first game of that series. We didn’t pitch him in Game 4. We let it get down to that one game and we lost. I never forgot that. Here, we’ve been talking about this for a couple of weeks. It came down to getting two chances to win one game.”

The Dodgers did not need that second chance. They are not flying to Atlanta on Tuesday, wearily and uncertainly, with travel and rotation plans in a pretzel. Because Kershaw came up with six typical innings Monday, and because Juan Uribe hammered a two-run home run in the eighth, the Dodgers won the Division Series over Atlanta, 4-3 in Game 4.

Now they can clear their heads and wait for Wednesday, when they will lounge as St. Louis and Pittsburgh play a Game 5. No matter what happens, Kershaw will perform in Game 2, and Zack Greinke, fellow Cy Young Award winner and the key to this whole deal, will work Game 1.

“The thing I want to reiterate is that this is the postseason,” said Kershaw, who came out of the clubhouse party and ran around the warning track, high-fiving fans like Cal Ripken in 1995, or an Olympic gold medal sprinter.

“I don’t want to take it for granted. I might never get to do this again. If Donnie (manager Don Mattingly) wanted me to pitch tomorrow, I would. All that other preparation -- is he going to be ready, is your arm going to be tired? Throw that out the window. It doesn’t matter. You just go. It’s a one-month sprint and I’m looking forward to the next couple of games.”

Because of a mystifying two-error performance by former Gold Glove first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, and because of nervous inefficiency by the offense, Kershaw had to leave with the game tied, 2-2, and then Atlanta went up 3-2 off Ronald Belisario. But he pitched typically – three hits, one walk, six innings, six strikeouts.

“He’s the best pitcher on the planet and his stuff wasn’t any different than in Game 1,” Ellis said.

While Mattingly was telling the world that Ricky Nolasco was the Game 4 starter, Kershaw was already adjusting his routine. Ellis knew the plan two days ago. But Kershaw could have aborted the mission at any point. Remember, he chucked 124 pitches in Game 1 and he is going into the final season of his contract in 2014.

“You’ve got to take your competitiveness out of this answer,” Colletti told him. “I know if I asked you to pitch today you would have said ‘Absolutely.’”

Kershaw said the right things, and got the ball.

“Who else are you going to give that opportunity to?” Colletti said. “He’s 25 years old, He knows his body, he knows where he’s at. We figured we had him and Zack. Two chances to win a game. We were going to take one of them.”

Greinke made it all possible. Short of a series loss, what was the worst consequence? It was losing Game 4 and winning Game 5, and in that case Kershaw could still pitch Game 2 in the NLCS, and Greinke would be ready for Games 3 and 7.

Two great pitchers are sometimes enough. Rarely, but sometimes. In 1987 Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven worked on three days’ rest throughout and the Twins won two series and the world championship. In 1991 Jack Morris pitched Games 1, 4 and 7 of the World Series. Game 7 was a 10-inning shutout.

Curt Schilling pitched Games 1, 4 and 7 for Arizona in 2001. John Lackey, an Angel rookie, won Game 7 of the Series on three days’ rest. Another rookie, Jaret Wright, got the Game 7 call of the 1997 World Series on three days’ rest and nearly pulled that off for Cleveland.

It is possible that Nolasco could have re-created August and gotten the Dodgers through this, and then Kershaw/Greinke would have been aligned for Games 1-2 of the next round. But Atlanta’s Freddy Garcia, a 36-year-old in the vagabond stage of his career, probably would have outpitched him. Except for two home runs by Carl Crawford, Garcia gave the Dodgers no runs and kept denying the big guns in RBI situations with nothing over 89 mph. It was a brilliant seminar on pitching hocus-pocus that nearly took this series back to the Chophouse in Atlanta.

But Kershaw also had something to teach.

“If it’s not three days’ rest, we don’t take him out there,” Mattingly said. “We were just going to have to make the decision because he was not going to come out of that game if you asked him.

“He’s a different cat. After he walked out of the office last night knowing he was going to pitch, I talked to Trey (bench coach Hillman). Trey said he was like a kid on Halloween that stole the biggest bag of candy you could ever see.”

Ellis saw that larcenous smile Monday, when he got to the clubhouse and saw Kershaw watching the MLB Network.

“All the pundits and analysts, talking about three days’ rest,” Ellis said. “Kersh had this smirk on his face.”

“I’m not going to say this game is really, really easy for him,” Ellis said. “But sometimes he needs something to raise his game. It wasn’t hard for him to adjust his schedule. As soon as he walked out of Game 1 he was headed for Game 4.”

And now the Dodgers are headed back to Game 1, on Friday, time enough to steam-clean the champagne out of their clothes and their clubhouse, time to get ready to rinse and repeat.

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